I Love Sitting Back While Other People Work

Right now, there is a nice gentleman named Jeff scurrying in and out of here, with wires and papers and tools, and I'm sitting on the couch watching "Judge Alex." It's a nice moment. It reminds me of just the other day when Justin and Jake were tirelessly putting all my nice furniture together and I was playing solitaire on my laptop.

And the reason for Jeff? Well, a picture is worth 1000 words, so unlike my last post, I think I will use a picture, instead of carrying on for 1000 words. This is the reason for Jeff:

First, note the really nice looking TV stand, courtesy of Justin and Jake. Nice, right? Moving on. As you can see, this is how I'm currently watching "Judge Joe Brown." On top of the TV are our rabbit ears: one ear bent, while the other is perched precariously on top of some shelves, which are on top of a crock pot, which is on top of a box filled with DVDs. This is the only way to get sound, along with the wonderful picture that you see here.

Right now, Jeff is in the attic that I didn't even know I had. If you haven't already guessed, Jeff is here to bring us the wonderful gift of SATELLITE TV. This is what it must have felt like when Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mankind. (http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/grecoromanmyth1/a/prometheus.htm). I'm very excited, because Justin and I have never had real TV together. There are even less channels at this place than at our last place. And soon we will have 100+ perfectly clear channels to choose from! Thank you, Jeff, thank you.

Sometimes Missing School Pays Off

Is there anyone out there who enjoys/enjoyed doing group projects and presentations in school? I'm actually very curious because I have never met anyone that liked them, or even saw the point of them. I think I can speak for Justin (as we have talked about it many times) and myself, that doing group projects and presentations are one of the WORST things EVER. We HATE them. (I would also like to point out that presentations, even solo ones, are also one of the worst things ever.)

One of the things that teachers/professors claim is that group projects are to better socialize their students...that group projects help everyone to get to know everyone else, and isn't that nice? They say that group projects teach students what it's going to be like in the "real" world, where everyone has to interact with other people in the workplace. If pressed, I might say this is true for young kids, in elementary school and middle school, you know, the kids that never say a word to anyone else...who never have any friends...who end up bringing a gun to school and shooting up the place...Maybe if that kid's teachers had forced him to do a group project with other kids, he would have met other kids and learned to love them, not want to kill them. Hmm...something to think about.

However, I am an adult. I am raised. I am socialized. This is college, people! We are at a university for higher learning! HIGHER learning! So, when Justin and I looked at the syllabus for our Script Analysis class, and it said "Historical Presentations" on it, we decided if it was a group thing, we would bail on the way to research in the library. If you're going to treat us like children, we are going to act like children. It comes very naturally for us. Well, it WAS a group thing.

Okay, okay, the situation can still be salvaged! Come on, Teach, you know the one thing that will make this better! Come on, let us pick our own groups! Ugh

(please imagine, if you can, the most annoying and exaggerated voice you possibly can) "Now I'm going to count you off, starting in the back, to put you into groups! 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. etc. Okay, okay, now I want all the "ones" up here, the "twos" there, the "threes" there, and the "fours" back there! yea!" Then he handed out the "topics" and we were stuck. No way we could bail on the way to research in the library. Our groups had seen us, it was too late.

dun
Dun
DUN.

Hm...so, I don't know if you've noticed but, I can get pretty dramatic in my story-telling. I probably could have told you all this in about 3 sentences, but where's the fun in that? It is getting pretty long, though. Maybe I can speed up the rest of the story. Here we go!

so, justinandi were in differentgroupsBLEH and there wasnoescaping. Wedidn'tbail, weplannedand researchedwithour groups. Therewasone moreresearchday beforepresentationsstarted. But,ohhowilovemyhusband,JustinwasSick the nextclassperiod!! Darn! don'tyouhatewhenthathappens? wemissedclass,missedthepresentations,missedthestupid stupidgroupassignment! Yea! imeandarn!

Now, this is a very tricky business, as you all probably know. Missing a big assignment like that can have huge consequences that you might never be able to make up. But, from the title of this post, you can probably surmise that this wasn't the case for us. We went up to our teacher after class on the day we returned and he gave us a new assignment to make up for it. And the assignment was to write a 3-page paper on how Shakespeare's "Hamlet" has been translated into movies. And best of all, NO presentation at all! It was all we could do not to skip out of there in glee! So, the lesson learned is that sometimes missing school pays off.

Update

Hello all! The last thing I posted was pretty vague, mostly because I was exhausted when I was writing it. I thought I should write a more in-depth update on what's going on with us, especially since our phone charger is one of the few things that is still at the other apartment. Our phone is dead and so I can't call anyone to tell them what's going on. We're going to the old place tomorrow when we don't have school or work to get the rest of our stuff and finish cleaning it all up.

Justin and I feel like we have been "moving" for a long time, and just about a week ago, we realized that we've both been so stressed out that we've been floating through life like zombies. The relief in finally finding a place to live and getting moved has been huge. As you all know, we were planning on moving down to St. George until about a week ago. We were trying to find a place down there that we could afford and it just wasn't happening. When we decided to stay in Cedar City, we found our new place almost immediately after we started looking. We fell in love with this little duplex pretty fast. It's in a newer part of Cedar that is way off Main Street, which is one of the perks for us.

Part of moving for me was trying to purge absolutely everything that we don't like or need out of our lives. We have acumulated so much junk furniture in the two and a half years we've been married, most of which we absolutely hate. It was all bulky, huge, and heavy. We've been very grateful for everything we've had, but it was time for a change. We used some of our student loan money to buy a new couch that we love and that will last a long time, a new TV stand that is much smaller than our entertainment center, and new bedding. We really wanted to simplify things, and you should have seen all the stuff we dropped at D.I. We're not even done yet, either. The only big things we kept were our bed, 2 bedside tables, one chair, our TV, and our treadmill. In the future, we hope to be able to buy a kitchen table and chairs, a new case for our DVDs, and far in the future, a new TV. Of course, we may have to invest in some baby furniture first :)

I want to thank Jake for coming down and helping us move a LOT of stuff, and for helping us put together our new furniture. It wasn't easy, and we really really appreciate it.

Other than moving, Justin is still working at Hollywood Video, which is better now since he got a raise. And we're both going to school three times a week in St. George. Commuting isn't so bad, and our classes aren't too demanding. We are taking Mass Communication, Communication Theory, Interpersonal Communication, and Script Analysis. It sounds daunting, but it hasn't been too bad yet.

What else? Well, I'm 10 weeks along today. The morning sickness is almost nonexistent now, thank goodness! and I have my next doctor's appointment in a week from tomorrow. The more I read about how our baby is growing, the more it strikes me as a complete miracle, and I can't imagine how anyone could throw this miracle away. Justin and I are so excited, maybe too excited, since we have quite a long wait ahead of us.

One more update to go, and then we're done! I just want to say that The Book Club is on hold for now. I want to say sorry to Nic for it all kind of falling apart in the middle of his month, and we will get back to Macbeth, I promise. Like I said, we've been pretty overwhelmed, and we're still recovering. Hopefully once we get completely moved, unpacked, and settled, The Book Club will be reinstated. I'll let everyone know when that happens.

We love you all, and we'll try to get everyone better updated on what's going on with us down here in southern Utah!

Thank you!

Thank you "InfoWest Customer" for not securing your network! I am sitting in our new place, on our new couch, on the internet! Yay!

We got mostly moved, but not totally, which is okay for now because I could care less about anything right now. I am so excited about all the new things we're experiencing.

Justin and Jake are sitting on the floor, watching football, putting together a very complicated TV stand, and I'm playing online...mmm, life is good.

So, even though Justin said that you would be rid of us, I guess not!

Farewell World Wide Web

We are moving and are no longer going to have the internet. So long internet. Moving sucks, I am pretty sure it's the worst thing in the world. But we can do it all today, so I guess it could be worse. I am going to leave this blog with one of the final songs ever performed by the Beatles, in what would be their final concert ever. This is one of the greatest songs ever. I love it very much. There is no hidden reason why I chose this song, It's just one of my all time favorites. Enjoy, and so long. Play me out John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

You-Haul-It

I don't know how many people I told but we were planning on moving to St. George. The day we got approved for a place and two days before we were going to move in, Lizzy (my current store manager) decides that she will theoretically be able to get me a raise, oh, and she decided to manipulate our district manager into not giving me a raise if I transferred down south despite the higher cost of living. So, I thought to myself, "self, what should I do?" Then I thought of something smarter, "ask somebody smarter." So I turned to Jesse who was sitting next to me, and we decided that we would stay if I demanded an immediate raise and they obliged. I told Lizzy that they would have to give me an immediate raise. No promises, only actions. They obliged. They gave me a dollar fifty raise, plus they are going to give me a promotion and another dollar raise when that happens. I am sweet!

Anyway, so now we are staying. Even though we decided to stay we still wanted to move out of our basement apartment because we are tired of not having a place that feels like our own. We very much appreciate what Kleston and Judy have done for us, in letting us live here for so cheap, but we just feel like it's time to have our own place. This is my really long-winded way of saying that we need help moving. Jesse isn't supposed to lift anything heavy, and we have some really heavy stuff. We found this really small, cute place across town. We love it, and need help moving. I know this is such short notice but we are moving on saturday, and we need help! We have a couch sitting at Big Lots! that we have to pick up on saturday because we have to. And I definitely can't lift that by myself. Plus the other stuff. We will have everything ready to move, we just need help moving half of our stuff to our place, and the other half to D.I. Somebody please come help us on this really short notice. We will even stop and go to Applebee's to watch the BYU game so no excuses there. Except for Chris, you are excused because you are going to the game. No worries there. Please let us know if you can help us. It will be pretty quick.

Funniest List Ever!

Today was really slow at work, so to pass the time I gave my store manager the challenge of writing down all fifty states in five minutes. She only got thirty two in the five minutes but she wanted to see if she could finish the list just for fun. She did, with help from others, but this has to be some of the worst spelling I have ever seen. She threw the list away and I dug it out of the trash to share with you people. By the way, this is the same person that has asked me how to spell 'aren't' and 'orange.' This is no joke. If nobody believes me, I will scan the actual copy and post it on here. Read them carefully. Here are her spellings:

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkinsa
Califorina
Colorado
Cuneticut
Deliware
Floridirida *this is my favorite*
Georgia
Hiwii
Idiaho
Illino
Indiana
Iawa
Kinsas
Kuntuky
Louisiana
Main
Maryland
Masachusets
Mishigan
Minisota
Mississippi
Msouri
Montana
Nabrasca
Navada
New Hampsire
New Mexico
New Jersey
New York
North Carolania
North Dacond
Oklahoma
Ohio
Origan
Pensilvania
Roah Island
South Carolina
South Dikoda
Texas
Tennassey
Utah
Vermont
Vergina
West Vergina
Washington
Wisconson
Wyoming

**She is not dyslexic by the way**